09 September 2009

Magnifying Glass on Ant-Man

Ant-Man, (also know as Giant Man since gaining the ability to grow as well as shrink - he has also gone as Goliath, Yellowjacket and even used his wife's alias Wasp), has been around since 1962 when he debuted in the pages of Tales to Astonish #27. Ant-Man was a founding member of 1963's Avengers. There have been other Ant-Men, but none aside from Hank Pym have made it onto film.

In 1966, an The Marvel Superheroes animated series featured the lineup of The Avengers in several Captain America segments. Allegedly, Ant-Man was part of that lineup, but it seems that no image or video I could find online can verify that. All I could muster was this poor quality intro footage which looks more Civil War era than 1960s.

Unfortunately, it would be another 30+ years before Ant-Man actually got spotted on TV screen, and lets just say it wasn't worth the wait. Looking at the image below, which one do you think is Ant-Man? Both seem reasonable candidates...

Turns out, the one on the ground with a seashell face is Ant-Man, and the other is Wasp as they appeared on the 1999 series Avengers United They Stand. This terrible show lasted just 13 episodes.

Finally Ant-Man (this time Giant Man) who get a respectful portrayal in the 2006 animated movies Ultimate Avengers and Ultimate Avengers 2: Rise of the Panther.

Even though he got beat up by a relatively tiny Hulk, Giant Man eventually proved his heroism.

2006 was a good year for the hero who next appeared as a guest star on the animated Fantastic Four: World's Greatest Heroes in the episode, "World's Tiniest Superheroes."

In 2008's Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow Ant-Man appeared only briefly in a flashback montage.

His winged son Pym, with his shrinking ability, played a main role in the movie.

Ant-Man is next slated to appear in Marvel's Super Hero Squad Show, which debuts next week.

The guy is also included in the cast for 2011's Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes series set to coincide with a live-action Avengers film which may or may not include old Ant-Man.

An Ant-Man movie is also currently in development, though that doesn't really mean too much, especially with the recent Marvel/Disney shake up. In any case, assuming Thor, Captain America, and the Avengers all do well, its a safe bet Ant-Man will be near the top of the list for next heroes to finally get a feature film. In fact, it is now looking like Ant-Man could be in Pixar's cross hairs giving him an even greater chance of expanding on the silver screen in animated form.